Numerical study of the flow of R1270-based nanorefrigerants in a circular tube subject to uniform heat flux

• Published in: Micro & nano letters Vol. 13; no. 12; pp. 1693 - 1698
• Main Authors: Zohud, Mohammed, Ouadha, Ahmed, Benzeguir, Redouane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stevenage The Institution of Engineering and Technology 01.12.2018; John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subjects: Al2O3; alumina; Aluminum oxide; CFD code Fluent; circular tube; Circular tubes; Computational fluid dynamics; convection; Convective heat transfer; convective heat transfer coefficients; copper compounds; CuO; Fluid flow; Heat flux; Heat transfer; Heat transfer coefficients; nanofluidics; nanoparticle diameter; nanoparticle volume concentration; Nanoparticles; numerical analysis; organic compounds; pipe flow; Propylene; propylene‐based nanorefrigerant; R1270‐based nanorefrigerants; refrigerants; Reynolds number; silicon compounds; Silicon dioxide; Simulation; SiO2; turbulence; turbulent convective heat transfer; two‐phase flow; uniform heat flux; zinc compounds; Zinc oxide; ZnO; uniform heat flux; turbulent convective heat transfer; convective heat transfer coefficients; Al2O3; two-phase flow; convection; alumina; nanoparticles; numerical analysis; zinc compounds; SiO2; CFD code Fluent; computational fluid dynamics; Reynolds number; nanoparticle diameter; refrigerants; nanoparticle volume concentration; turbulence; nanofluidics; circular tube; propylene-based nanorefrigerant; pipe flow; copper compounds; silicon compounds; ZnO; organic compounds; R1270-based nanorefrigerants; CuO
• ISSN: 1750-0443; 1750-0443
• DOI: 10.1049/mnl.2018.5132

In this work, turbulent convective heat transfer of propylene (R1270)-based nanorefrigerant in a circular tube with a uniform heat flux of 20 kW/m2 is numerically investigated using different types of nanoparticles namely Al2O3, CuO, SiO2 and ZnO with a volume concentration ranging from 0 to 5%. Computations have been carried out using the commercial CFD code Fluent for Reynolds number ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 and a nanoparticle diameter of 30 nm. Results in terms of the average convective heat transfer coefficients of both pure R1270 and R1270-based nanorefrigerants have been compared successfully to values obtained using correlations from the literature. It is found that among nanorefrigerants studied, R1270/CuO performs the best, followed in order by R1270/Al2O3, R1270/ZnO and R1270/SiO2. It is also shown that the convective heat transfer coefficient is enhanced by increasing the Reynolds number and the nanoparticles volume concentration.